注意力机制的曲面沉浸式投影系统补偿

目的 沉浸式投影系统已广泛运用于虚拟现实系统之中,然而沉浸式投影系统中的互反射现象严重影响着虚拟现实系统的落地使用。沉浸式投影系统的互反射是指由于投影机光线和屏幕反射光线相互叠加造成的亮度冗余现象,严重影响了投影系统的成像质量和人眼的视觉感受。为此,本文提出一种新的基于互反射通道(inter-reflection channel,IRC)先验和注意力机制的神经网络。方法 IRC先验基于这样一个事实,即大多数受到互反射影响的投影图像都包含一些亮度较高的区域。高亮度区域往往受互反射影响更为严重,而低亮度区域受互反射影响程度较低。根据这一规律,采用IRC先验作为注意力图的监督样本,获取补偿图像的亮度区域信息。同时,为了对投影图像不同区域按影响程度进行差异化补偿,提出一种新的由两个相同子网络构成的补偿网络结构Pair-Net。结果 实验对比了4种现有方法,Pair-Net在ROI(region of interesting)指标分析上取得了明显优势,在人眼感受上有显著的效果提升。结论 本文提出的基于注意力机制的网络模型能够针对不同区域进行差异化补偿,很大程度上消除了互反射影响,提升了沉浸式投影系统的成像质量。     

“If You Tilt This Game,Will It Explode?”: The politics of nuclear display at the New York Hall of Science (1966–1973)

This article analyzes the politics of nuclear display at the New York Hall of Science in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Hall of Science, which had its beginnings in the 1964–1965 New York World's Fair, featured hands‐on atomic exhibits for children and was planning a monumental Nuclear Science Center with the full support of the Atomic Energy Commission. The Nuclear Science Center would have been the biggest permanent display on nuclear science and technology in the United States and the Atomarium its most spectacular exhibit. At the Atomarium, visitors would have watched a working nuclear reactor go critical from a spiral‐shaped theater‐in‐the‐round while listening to a demonstrator standing on a transparent plexiglass window located right above the reactor core lecturing on peaceful uses of atomic energy. This article analyzes the Hall of Science as a space in which contemporary tensions between nuclear exceptionalism and nuclear banalization were played out. In particular, the article explores how playful and immersive regimes of display played a political role in modulating nuclear fear at a time when, while promoting a private nuclear energy industry, the Atomic Energy Commission encountered growing resistance to nuclear power plants.     

Stereo Inverse Brightness Modulation for Guidance in Dynamic Panorama Videos in Virtual Reality

The peak of virtual reality offers new exciting possibilities for the creation of media content but also poses new challenges. Some areas of interest might be overlooked because the visual content fills up a large portion of viewers' visual field. Moreover, this content is available in 360° around the viewer, yielding locations completely out of sight, making, for example, recall or storytelling in cinematic Virtual Reality (VR) quite difficult. In this paper, we present an evaluation of Stereo Inverse Brightness Modulation for effective and subtle guidance of participants' attention while navigating dynamic virtual environments. The used technique exploits the binocular rivalry effect from human stereo vision and was previously shown to be effective in static environments. Moreover, we propose an extension of the method for successful guidance towards target locations outside the initial visual field. We conduct three perceptual studies, using 13 distinct panorama videos and two VR systems (a VR head mounted display and a fully immersive dome projection system), to investigate (1) general applicability to dynamic environments, (2) stimulus parameter and VR system influence, and (3) effectiveness of the proposed extension for out-of-sight targets. Our results prove the applicability of the method to dynamic environments while maintaining its unobtrusive appearance.     

Effects of threat and efficacy messages on expected adherence to decontamination protocols in an immersive simulated chemical incident: A randomized controlled experiment

The UK’s Initial Operational Response (IOR) decontamination protocol requires that chemically contaminated casualties remove contaminated clothing (disrobe) and then apply water or absorbent materials to skin. The health‐protective efficacy of the protocol is predicated on casualties quickly accepting both the need to act and the fact that this protocol is an effective action. The aim of this study was to test whether adherence is affected by the presentation of information by first responders about the severity and likelihood of contamination (Threat) and the health‐protective efficacy of IOR procedures (efficacy). A double‐blind randomized controlled experiment (N = 132) with a 3x2 independent measures design (registration number: ISRCTN17886859) was used to assess the effects of threat and efficacy on behavioural expectations during a simulated chemical incident, presented as an immersive video. Results indicated that addressing the threat of contamination made participants more likely to expect themselves to disrobe were the situation real. Emphasizing the efficacy of protective action made participants more likely to expect themselves to apply absorbent materials to skin and had an indirect positive effect on disrobing expectations, mediated by efficacy perceptions. We recommend that first responders explicitly address the threat of contamination and efficacy of decontamination when communicating with chemically contaminated casualties.     

Intelligent collaborative patent mining using excessive topic generation

An inevitable consequence of the technology-driven economy has led to the increased importance of intellectual property protection through patents. Recent global pro-patenting shifts have further resulted in high technology overlaps. Technology components are now spread across a huge corpus of patent documents making its interpretation a knowledge-intensive engineering activity. Intelligent collaborative patent mining facilitates the integration of inputs from patented technology components held by diverse stakeholders. Topic generative models are powerful natural language tools used to decompose data corpus topics and associated word bag distributions. This research develops and validates a superior text mining methodology, called Excessive Topic Generation (ETG), as a preprocessing framework for topic analysis and visualization. The presented ETG methodology adapts the topic generation characteristics from Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) with added capability to generate word distance relationships among key terms. The novel ETG approach is used as the core process for intelligent collaborative patent mining. A case study of 741 global Industrial Immersive Technology (IIT) patents covering inventive and novel concepts of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Brain Machine Interface (BMI) are systematically processed and analyzed using the proposed methodology. Based on the discovered topics of the IIT patents, patent classification (IPC/CPC) predictions are analyzed to validate the superior ETG results.     

Virtual reality for architectural acoustics

Over the last decades, powerful prediction models have been developed in architectural acoustics, which are used for the calculation of sound propagation in indoor and/or outdoor scenarios. Sound insulation is predicted rather precisely by using direct and flanking transmission models of sound and vibration propagation. These prediction tools are already in use in architectural design and consulting. For the extension towards virtual reality (VR) systems, it is required to accelerate the prediction and simulation tools significantly and to allow an adaptive and interactive data processing during the simulation and 3D audio stimulus presentation. This article gives an overview on the current state-of-the-art of acoustic VR and discusses all relevant components in terms of accuracy, implementation and computational effort. With the progress in processing power, it is already possible to apply such VR concepts for architectural acoustics and to start perceptual studies in integrated architectural design processes.     

Real‐Time Human Shadow Removal in a Front Projection System

When a person is located between a display and an operating projector, a shadow is cast on the display. The shadow on the display may eliminate important visual information and therefore adversely affect the viewing experiences. There have been various attempts to remove the human shadow cast on a projection display by using multiple projectors. While previous approaches successfully removed the shadow region when a person moderately moves around or stands stationary in front of the display, there is still an afterimage effect due to the lack of consideration of the limb motion of the person. We propose a new real‐time approach to removing the shadow cast by a person who dynamically interacts with the display, making limb motions in a front projection system. The proposed method utilizes a human skeleton obtained from a depth camera to track the posture of the person which changes over time. A model that consists of spheres and conical frustums is constructed based on the skeleton information in order to represent volumetric information of the person being tracked. Our method precisely estimates the shadow region by projecting the volumetric model onto the display. In addition, employment of intensity masks that are built based on a distance field helps suppress the afterimage of the shadow that appears when the person moves abruptly. It also helps blend the projected overlapping images from different projectors and show one smoothly combined display. The experiment results verify that our approach removes the shadow of a person effectively in a front projection environment and is fast enough to achieve real‐time performance.     

沉浸式虚拟现实的发展概况及发展趋势

本文简述了沉浸式虚拟现实四个阶段的发展概况,分析了沉浸式虚拟现实的优缺点,探讨了沉浸式虚拟现实的发展趋势.未来,头显设备将会更加轻巧,人机交互将会更加自然,沉浸式虚拟现实将会在各行各业得到普遍的应用.     

Accelerating Scientific Discovery Through Computation and Visualization II

This is the second in a series of articles describing a wide variety of projects at NIST that synergistically combine physical science and information science. It describes, through examples, how the Scientific Applications and Visualization Group (SAVG) at NIST has utilized high performance parallel computing, visualization, and machine learning to accelerate research. The examples include scientific collaborations in the following areas: (1) High Precision Energies for few electron atomic systems, (2) Flows of suspensions, (3) X-ray absorption, (4) Molecular dynamics of fluids, (5) Nanostructures, (6) Dendritic growth in alloys, (7) Screen saver science, (8) genetic programming.     

从保护心理学角度探讨动物园沉浸式展示设计

当代动物园的主要职责是致力于物种保护,促使游客发生环境友好行为.动物园沉浸式展示设计除了应满足基本的动物福利,还应该更好地帮助动物园实现这一职责.针对动物园设计师们对于公众环保行为产生机制的盲区,引入保护心理学作为有力的辅助工具.通过梳理保护心理学针对动物园游客研究的文献,对动物园的沉浸式展示的规划设计提出4项建议:1...